Developmental Psych

Question 1

What kinds of questions would be of interest to Developmental Psychologists?

Answer 1

Income and racial/ethnic inequality and their effects on human development, health, and longevity
Achievement gap/opportunity gap
Adversity
How much and how do experiences during childhood and adolescence constrain/influence one’s life course

Question 2

What is meant by a “cells to society” approach?

Answer 2

Microsystem (what directs directly with the individual) → ecosystem (outside the family) → macrosystem (attitudes and ideologies of culture)

Mesosystem = how the microsystem and ecosystem interact with each other

Chronosystem = time (sociohistorical, conditions and time since life events)

Question 3

What is meant by “bidirectional influences” in developmental psychology?

Answer 3

Genes influence your organ systems and your social experiences and your social experiences feedback and influence your genes

a relationship in both directions over two time points

example = parenting

Question 4

What kind of measures do developmental psychologists use?

Answer 4

Molecular level data: genes, epigenetics

Systems level: neuroimaging, hormones

Behavioral level - individual - observations, questionnaires, responses to tasks/test

Behavioral level - interactions among dyads, triads, groups
School and neighborhood level

National, cultural levels

Question 5

how does SES (Social & Economic Status) of parents affect the size of children’s vocabulary?

Answer 5

Barrier to achievement gap starts early

Across the spectrum of parents talking with their children, it was more education not SES

16-24 months = the burst of language learning

By 36 months, those with higher SES have a higher cumulative vocabulary (words)

Question 6

with low-income Spanish Speaking families, what was the relationship between the number of words that you heard at the age of 19 months and the speed of processing language at 24 months?

Answer 6

The more words they were hearing, the more quickly they processed it

Environment, not socioeconomic status that was making a difference

Question 7

What is the Post-Hoc fallacy?

Answer 7

one event is said to be the cause of a later event simply because it occurred earlier

Question 8

What is the relationship between social class and brain development?

Answer 8

Brain development and social class have a positive relationship with each other

Gap between social class and brain development increase with age (the older you get, the more social class matters in brain development)

Question 9

How does family income have an effect on the size of a child’s hippocampus

Answer 9

Higher income to needs

Aspects of parenting have a significant impact on mediating the hippocampus

Question 10

What is the Chicago Longitudinal Study? What were the effects of the intervention on school readiness? Repeating a grade? Completing High School?

Answer 10

Comprehensive program: preschool, family services, parent involvement beginning age 3 and through 3rd grade

Kids are now 30 years old, beginning to track health and educational outcomes

Kids who got the intervention increased the number who were school ready, less had to repeat grades, and more completed high school than the control group

Question 11

What are the biggest drivers for return on investment in the chicago study

Answer 11

taxes from the fact that the intervention kids are holding down jobs better

and reduced cost of in jail or prison

Question 12

What is attachment and when does attachment develop?

Answer 12

Categorized by secure base behavior and resisting separation

Directs the baby to seek proximity with attachment figures
(Especially when sick, tired or scared)

Question 13

What does the Attatchment Theory predict

Answer 13

secure attachment in infancy will be associated with…
Higher self esteem and confidence
Better relationships with peers and social competence
Trusting relationships with teachers, not needy
Better and more secure adult romantic relationships more trusting and more equitable

argues that the quality/security of parent-infant attachment forms the working model from which children’s later intimate relationship with others emerges

Securely attached infants should become individuals who have better, higher quality relationships with peers

Question 14

What is imprinting

Answer 14

a behavioral trait when hours after being born you develop an extremely close bond with the people you first meets, usually your parents

Question 15

What is Konrad Lorenz best known for?

Answer 15

founding fathers of the field of ethology, the study of animal behavior

He is best known for his research of the principle of attachment, or imprinting

Question 16

What is the strange situation? What were the results?

Answer 16

a semi-structured laboratory procedure that allows us to identify, without lengthy home observation, infants who effectively use a primary caregiver as a secure base

Result:
Sensitive mothers are more likely to have securely attached children. In contrast, mothers who are less sensitive towards their child, for example, those who respond to the child’s needs incorrectly or who are impatient or ignore the child, are likely to have insecurely attached children

Question 16

What is the strange situation? What were the results?

Answer 16

a semi-structured laboratory procedure that allows us to identify, without lengthy home observation, infants who effectively use a primary caregiver as a secure base

Result:
Sensitive mothers are more likely to have securely attached children. In contrast, mothers who are less sensitive towards their child, for example, those who respond to the child’s needs incorrectly or who are impatient or ignore the child, are likely to have insecurely attached children

Question 17

What are the stages/types of play

Answer 17

Unoccupied
Solitary
Onlooker behavior
Parallel play adjacent play, social coaction
Associative play (run and chase)
Cooperative play (tag your it.. rules)

Question 18

What is a meta-analysis

Answer 18

A subset of systematic reviews

finding similar studies and put together their results

effect size weighted by size of the sample

Question 18

What is a meta-analysis

Answer 18

A subset of systematic reviews

finding similar studies and put together their results

effect size weighted by size of the sample

Question 19

What does meta-analysis suggest about the association between infant attachment and the quality of children’s peer relationships?

Answer 19

children who are more securely attached will have wider, more quality relationships with peers

Question 20

Why does the relationship between secure relationships and peer relations increase with time?

Answer 20

You build trust through time which strengthens relationships

Question 21

How do friendships change over time?

Answer 21

Reciprocal “friends” emerge in preschool

Friendships are not very enduring until adolescents and young adulthood

As you get older, friendships become more who you can trust and tell private, personal things

Question 22

What does it mean to be neglected (social status)

Answer 22

few kids like or dislike you (like you are not there)

Question 23

What does it mean to be rejected (social status)

Answer 23

few kids like you, many dislike you

Question 24

What does it mean to be bullied (social status)

Answer 24

picked on by other kids, but does not mean you are rejected or neglected, some bullied kids are also bullies themselves

Question 25

Does being the victim of bullying increase a child’s problems

Answer 25

yes, being a victim of bullying increases your problems, over and above what you had before you were bullied

Question 26

What relationship do researchers find between teen romantic relationships and adult romantic relationships?

Answer 26

Romantic relationship quality as a teen predict adult romantic relationships, association goes away when control for social and academic competence

Lots of romantic partners in adolescence predicts poorer quality romantic relationships in adulthood

Question 27

What were some of the beliefs that Piaget had about kids?

Answer 27

Piaget proposed a grand theory of intellectual development that viewed children as actively constructing knowledge through interaction with their environments

Children are inherently curious and seek stimulation

Development results from the interaction between the biologically prepared child and his or her environment

Question 28

What is the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development?

Answer 28

0-2 years

The infant explores the world through direct sensory and motor contact

Object permanence and separation anxiety develop during this stage

Some changes going on all the time

Question 29

What is the preoperational stage of cognitive development?

Answer 29

2-6 years

The child uses symbols (words and images) to represent objects but does not reason logically

Child has the ability to pretend

Child is egocentric

Question 30

What is the concrete operational stage of cognitive development?

Answer 30

7-12 years

The child can think logically about concrete objects and can thus add and subtract

Child understands conservation

Question 31

What is the formal operational stage of cognitive development?

Answer 31

12 years-adult

The adolescent can reason abstractly and think in hypothetical terms

Question 32

What is object permanence and when does it develop?

Answer 32

Occurs from 8-12 months of age

Object permanence is the knowledge that objects continue to exist even when not in view

Question 33

Why does the A-not-B task occur?

Answer 33

lack of object permanence and inhibitory control

Question 34

According to Rene Baillargeon, what do babies understand about objects by about 3.5 months?

Answer 34

Babies and 3.5 months old already understand something about the properties of objects (object permanence)

Relative size, solidity, gravity, occlusion, etc

Proves that piaget’s timeline about object permanence is slightly off

Question 35

How do younger vs. older kids perform on conservation tasks?

Answer 35

Older kids perform better on conservation tasks

Younger children tend to focus exclusively on one dimension and ignore or disregard others

Older children can consider and coordinate multiple dimensions simultaneously

Question 36

What is centration?

Answer 36

Piaget called the focus on a single dimension centration

Question 37

What does the Wynn task suggest?

Answer 37

such studies do suggest that infants may understand some aspects of number and quantity much earlier than piaget believed

Although actions on objects do become progressively coordinated over time, infants seem to understand things about the number of objects before much of this action coordination takes place

Question 38

What is the theory of mind?

Answer 38

The understanding that others can have knowledge, beliefs, desires, intentions, or perspectives that differ from one’s own

Self as distinct from other
Mental state language
Reasoning about mental states

Question 39

What is a false belief task?

Answer 39

Shows M&M box, but there are really pencils in the box
Prior to opening asked what do you think is in this box
After opening asked what is really in this box, what did you think was in the box before you opened it and david hasn’t seen this box yet (what will david think is in the box before he opens it

Younger kids get stuck on what they know to be true, and can’t get past their prior mental state

Once they see what is actually in the box, they will say they always knew what was in the box even if they got the answer wrong initially

Question 40

What are different reasons for false belief failures?

Answer 40

Egocentrism, Task demands, weak inhibitory control, and language development

Question 41

Who was Donald T

Answer 41

An autism patient who had rigid adherence to routines along with verbal rituals and impaired linguistic pragmatics

Question 42

What are two pieces of evidence that autism may have a biological basis

Answer 42

The relationship between seizure disorders and autistic individuals (Brain disorder, Rimland)

The concordance rates between fraternal/identical twins (heritability, Folstein & Rutter)

Question 43

What is Nosology

Answer 43

the branch of medical science dealing with the classification of diseases

Etiology
Pathogenesis
Signs and symptoms

Question 44

What are the differences between the classification of autism and autistic spectrum disorders in the DSM-IV and the DSM-V

Answer 44

The DSM-IV classifies autism/autistic spectrum disorders as pervasive developmental disorders. Criteria are: social impairments, communication deficits, and stereotyped interests and rigid/repetitive behavior

The DSM-V classifies autism/autistic spectrum disorders as autism spectrum disorders. Criteria include: persistent deficits in social communication, and restricted/repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities.

Question 45

What are the diagnostic symptoms of autism?

Answer 45

Impaired social communication interaction and restricted/repetitive behavior

Question 46

What are the associated features of autism?

Answer 46

Sex ratio ~ 4:1 male to female
Intellectual disability ~30% of all autism cases associated with intellectual disability (IQ < 70 and documented functional impairment
Seizure disorders ~ 20-30% of all autism cases
Comorbid conditions
Savant skills <1% of all autism cases

Question 47

What do epidemiologists mean by incidence and prevalence?

Answer 47

Prevalence = A count (proportion/percentage) of the total number of people with a specific disease in a given population at a given time

Incidence = An index (usually rate) or the total number of new cases identified within a given population during a specified time

Question 48

Why the increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism?

Answer 48

Greater public awareness
Better case ascertainment
Lower age at diagnosis
Diagnostic substitution
Changes in diagnostic criteria

Question 49

Is Autism heterogeneous or homogeneous?

Answer 49

Heterogeneous

Question 50

Results from autism studies

Answer 50

No overt behavior markers of autism at 6 months of age

Bx risk markers at 12 months

Autism is not a singular phenomenon

Understanding patterns of brain and behavioral development in early life will inform early identification and early intervention, and may potentially inform future efforts of strategic prevention

Question 51

What is a cross-sectional study

Answer 51

a type of research design in which you collect data from many different individuals at a single point in time

Question 52

What is a longitudinal study

Answer 52

you repeatedly collect data from the same sample over an extended period of time

Question 53

What is a cohort and its effects

Answer 53

a cohort is a group of people who share common characteristics or experiences

A cohort effect occurs when a research result is impacted by the characteristics of the cohort(s) being studied

Question 54

What are teratogens

Answer 54

a substance that can cause abnormalities or birth defects in a developing fetus

Question 55

How are assimilation and accommodation different

Answer 55

Assimilation is a process of adaptation by which new knowledge is taken into the pre-existing schema

Accommodation is a process of adaptation by which the pre-existing schema is altered in order to fit in the new knowledge

Question 56

What is a schema

Answer 56

a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information

Question 57

What are Baumrind’s parenting styles

Answer 57

permissive, authoritative, neglectful and authoritarian

Question 58

What is Kohlberg’s model of moral development

Answer 58

suggested that people move through the three levels of moral reasoning (preconventional, conventional, and postconventional) in a fixed order, and that moral understanding is linked to cognitive development